Hero
by her0girl
Summary: After a family tragedy, will Elliot be able to recover with the help of his partner? Or will his life be shattered forever? *spoiler alert for those who haven't watched season 9* -ON HOLD FOR A FEW MONTHS
1. Chapter 1

Hot air blew out from the car's engine and the airbags seemed to take up all of the space in the car. Olivia Benson slowly opened her eyes, the smell of burning rubber hitting her eyes and stinging her nose. She tried to sit up more, but the seatbelt was jammed. She looked around for a knife to pop the airbag and cut the seatbelt, and managed to grab her knife from her belt. She coughed and moved to look at the passenger side, disoriented.

Everything had happened so fast, she didn't even know what had hit them. One moment they'd been on the phone with Elliot, catching a criminal, and the next, the car was crumpled like a piece of paper. The light was green, and the other car came out of nowhere, hitting their car and flipping it once while spinning it out of control. Benson would've never even seen it coming.

"Kathy? Kathy, can you hear me?" Stabler's wife was unconscious, her head leaning against the cracked window. Olivia tried to move to see Kathy's injuries, but her leg was stuck underneath the dashboard and between the petals. She grunted as she tried to escape the grasp of the car, and pulled her leg loose, letting out a squawk of pain. "I'll get you out of here Kathy, I promise."

Olivia looked around frantically for her walkie-talkie and tried to figure out how long they must've been there. She couldn't see the other driver through the windows, but at the speed he was going, he could be trapped in his car too. She only hoped that someone had called the cops, because it was a possibility that the walkie was broken too, after all, the cell phone had been crushed in the radio. Olivia finally got the walkie, and it was emitting high frequency noises and occasional words.

"This is Detective Benson, I need a bus, I've gotten into a crash, there is another person in the car with me, Kathy Stabler, Elliot Stabler's wife, she's pregnant, please send help immediately." She felt a wave of dizziness pass through her, but she grabbed onto the door handle to steady herself a little. Kathy was still unconscious, so she looked for something to break the window so she could get out and help Kathy from the outside. Then she noticed there were already spider cracks in the glass, and she used her elbow to fragment it more, before finally breaking through. She pushed some of the shards off and crawled through, wincing as a piece of glass cut her stomach. She started hearing sirens just as she made it through the window.

The dizziness hit again, but she saw the ambulance, and knew they had to get Kathy out. Kathy made a mumbling noise and Olivia went to the other side of the car, where the window had already broken. "Kathy? Kathy, can you hear me? We were in an accident, everything's going to be okay."

Kathy opened her eyes and stared blankly for a few seconds before flicking her eyes towards Olivia. "My water broke…" She started to move her head and arms before Olivia strapped her arms down.

"Kathy, don't move. You could have a fracture and you could be hurt…" She started trailing off. Her head hurt, and it felt like she was weightless for a second, and then like a giant was on her back. She put her weight on the door of the car. The ambulance pulled up beside the car, and two paramedics came out.

"The fire department is on its way. We should look at you while they're getting here, that's a pretty nasty gash you have on your head." The EMT gestured to her head, right by her ear. Olivia moved her hand up and felt a deep cut going from the middle of her scalp to the tip of her ear. It was bleeding down the entire left side of her face, but was starting to clot.

"Don't worry about me. I need you to get this woman help. Her water broke, and she's having contractions. She's my partner's wife." One of the paramedics went over to the woman.

"I can't open the door," he said as he furiously tried to open the doors on the sides. They were all jammed shut. "And I can't fit through that window either."

"I can," Olivia volunteered. "Just tell me what to do and hand me the stuff that you'll need to give her." Kathy moaned in pain as a contraction happened. "Please, she needs as much help as she can get." The paramedics agreed and starting getting supplies out of the ambulance. Olivia managed to get herself back inside of the car through her window, and one of the paramedics came up to her with a neck brace.

"Put this around her neck. We need to keep it as still as possible because it's likely that she could've hurt her spine. When the firemen get here, they're going to have to pry her out and we need her neck and spine as still as possible for that." Olivia nodded and got the brace around Kathy's neck.

Kathy's eyes were wild with fear, and she looked around the car, becoming completely aware of her surroundings. "Olivia?" She asked, her voice shaky.

"It's alright Kathy, I'm right here." Olivia reclined the seat back a little bit, and held Kathy's hand. "Don't be scared. Everything's going to be alright."

Kathy squeezed her hand and cringed as another contraction went through her body. Olivia had been counting and called one of the paramedics to the window. "Her contractions are about seven minutes apart, will they be here soon?"

"Yeah, they'll be here any second now." A blaring siren cut through the air and the fire engine came down the street with all of its machinery. "They're going to have to use the Jaws of Life to get her out." Olivia nodded and felt Kathy's hand go limp.

"Kathy? Kathy or you okay?" Olivia gave Kathy's hand a gentle squeeze, but Kathy was unconscious again. Olivia leaned over the seat to look at her and realized that her dress was saturated with blood. "Oh my god." She turned towards the window and shouted towards the paramedics. "I need help, she's bleeding an unconscious!"

One of the paramedics went in and got an IV and a bag of fluids. "Okay, you have to find a vein. Can you do that?" He handed her the IV guide and she looked at Kathy's arms, desperately looking for a good vein. She finally found one.

"Okay, now what do I do?"

"Push into the vein until blood appears in the tube."

Olivia pushed the guide needle farther and farther into the vein in Kathy's arm. " I'm not seeing anything."

"You'll have to push harder."

She got blood in the tube, and the EMT passed her a bag of fluids, which she quickly hooked up to the IV. Kathy blinked her eyes and then looked back at Olivia. "Olivia the baby's coming faster."

"Hold it in Kathy, we need to get you out. It's just a little longer."

The firemen started the pursuit to get them out, and Olivia kept Kathy's head still the entire time, preventing her head from getting jostled around. They finally got the hood of the car and separated the passenger door so that Kathy's legs weren't pinned. They put her on a gurney, and put her into the ambulance.

"Olivia, please don't leave me."

"I'm right here Kathy, don't worry." Olivia still held her hand, but felt her entire body sway like a reed in the wind, even though the ambulance wasn't moving yet. One of the paramedics went to the front to drive and the other stayed in the back to help. "How far is the hospital from here?" Olivia looked at Kathy frantically, and then to the paramedic.

"About seven or eight minutes."

"She's not gonna make it that long. That baby's gonna be born here."

The paramedic nodded and then prepped Kathy. Olivia held her hand and every time she pushed Kathy would squeeze her hand.

"Congratulations, you have a new baby boy." The paramedic wrapped him in a heat-conserving blanket, after cutting the umbilical cord. Then, Kathy's eyes became distant, and the machine monitoring her heart started beeping rapidly. The paramedic handed Olivia the little baby boy, and she held him tight to her chest. All of the adrenaline she had during the wreck had worn off, and she fully succumbed to her injuries.

"What's happening?" Olivia asked, the words slightly blurring together.

"She's coding." He frantically worked to help her, giving her CPR. They pulled up to the hospital and Kathy was rushed in, Olivia right behind with the baby. Someone took the baby to be put in the NICU, to monitor his stats because of the crash.

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><p><strong>Emergency Room<strong>

**Thursday, 5:06 p.m**

Olivia sat down in a chair in the ER right after Kathy had been rushed into surgery, and Elliot dashed in.

Elliot sped over to Olivia. "Liv? Liv, where's Kathy?"

Olivia started to stand up and then collapsed into Elliot's arms, the blood from her had soaking into his shirt and tie. "Help! Someone help!" Olivia's eyes fluttered and then closed as doctors came around her and took her away through the same door's Kathy had just gone through. Elliot looked on to the door, and wondered what had gone so horrendously wrong that the two women he cared about most in the world were suddenly both dying right in front of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Went on a writing binge. Here's chapter 2.**

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><p><strong>Mercy General Hospital<strong>

**Saturday, 12:45 p.m**

The clicks and whirs of the machine were the only things preventing total silence in the hospital room. Olivia's head was wrapped in clean, white bandages, and she had a few stitches on her left wrist. She stirred slightly in the bed, and then slowly blinked her eyes, the light in the room almost blinding. She turned her head slightly as her eyes adjusted to the light, and looked around the room.  
>There was a wooden chair pulled up to the side of her bed, and a plastic cup with water on the nightstand next to it. On the left side of the bed, there was a bag of fluids dripping into her arm, and a bag of blood too. She blinked a couple of times, and then looked around once more, trying to see if anyone had been there recently. A nurse with a clipboard stood by a desk a few feet outside of her door, and the nurse glanced at Olivia. "She's awake." The nurse put down the clipboard next to the doctor that had been standing there, and walked into the room.<p>

"Detective Benson, do you know why you're here?" The nurse pulled a flashlight from her pocket and ran it across her eyes a couple of times, nodding and jotting something down a notepad.

Olivia swallowed and looked at the nurse. "There was a car accident." Her eyes widened. "How long have I been out? Is Kathy okay? What about the baby?" She tried to sit up but her head throbbed, so she stopped.

"Don't try to sit up just yet. You suffered some head trauma. You have a concussion, and while it isn't severe we've had to keep you in a medically induced coma. You lost a lot of blood." The doctor nearby piped up. The nurse and doctor didn't answer her other questions, and Olivia grew worrisome.

"But what about Kathy? How's Kathy? And the baby, and Elliot? Are they okay?" She cleared her throat a little, as it had started to crack. "And how long was I specifically out?"

The nurse sighed and then looked over at the doctor, who just nodded. The nurse looked back at Olivia, and then started to speak. "We had to keep you out for two days while you were still in the woods. Mrs. Stabler's injuries were much worse than yours." Olivia looked at the nurse's face, trying to grasp what she was saying. "The crash caused internal bleeding that we didn't catch until she was in surgery, and her brain bled. She's been in a coma, and it doesn't look good.

"The baby is fine. He was born healthy, and should be fine with enough attention to make sure we didn't miss anything. Detective Stabler is in his wife's room right now."

"I need to see them." Olivia demanded. She needed to make sure- to know that Kathy was still alive. Kathy couldn't die, she was Elliot's wife, and she'd been fine before, she had to pull through. "Please, let me see them."

"We thought you'd say that." The doctor who had been standing in the doorway brought in a wheelchair, and the nurse helped Olivia in it slowly, as to not move her head around too much.

"What room?" Olivia asked, starting to wheel herself towards the door.

"Room 413. It's down the hall, on your left."

She started to go down the hall, looking at doctors and patients in rooms, rolling by families watching over loved ones. Hospitals, she decided, were some of the worst places to have to be. She pulled up to 413, and the door was closed. She reached out for the door handle, took a deep breath, and then went in.

Elliot was by the bed, holding his wife's limp hand. The machines around her were the only things keeping her alive. Olivia moved towards him, and Kathy's body came into full view.

She looked almost at peace. There were a couple of cuts on her lower lip, and a small cut on her chin. Her hands were at her sides, and there weren't any needles in her arms, as if the doctors knew it was just wasting resources. A tube was down her throat, keeping her lungs full of oxygen, and another machine was monitoring and keeping her heart going.

"She wanted to name him Elliot. Our son, she wanted to name him Elliot if it was a boy." Stabler looked over at Olivia, whose face was filled with sadness and guilt. Guilt that she could've doe more, that maybe if she'd been faster that she could've lived, that everything could've been normal.

"The world will never have enough Elliot Stablers." Olivia said, at almost a whisper. "Elliot, I'm so sorry, if I had just been faster, done something-" Elliot cut her off.

"It wasn't your fault, Liv. The damage was too much, there's nothing you could've done." Elliot walked over to her and pulled her body out of the chair. A tear lingered on the edge of her eye, threatening to open a box of emotions that was usually kept tucked away. Elliot pulled her weak body into a hug, and Olivia wrapped her arms around him, allowing the rest of her body to go limp. The bag of fluids hooked up to the wheelchair only allowed them to get so close. Olivia sobbed into his shoulder.

"El, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The words barely escaped through pieces of her sobs when she would gasp for air. She started to get lightheaded, and managed to stop breathing in all of the air at once. Elliot ran his fingers over the bandages on her head.

"Do you want to see the baby?" Elliot's voice cracked, but managed to stay calm, as if he didn't have enough strength for his emotions to take over.

Olivia pulled away and nodded, and Elliot helped her back into the wheelchair, and brought her to the NICU. There was a huge piece of glass that acted as a window to see the babies through without harming them with outside illnesses. One of the babies wore a tiny blue cap, and squirmed around in his little bed.

"That's him." Elliot pointed to the little boy with no name.

Olivia looked at the infant, mesmerized, and put a hand to the glass, watching him. A nurse went over to the baby and gave him a warm bottle. He almost instantly stopped squirming and fell into a trance. "He's beautiful, El."

"Yeah, I just wish that he got to meet his mother."

Olivia thought back to the accident, and guilt stabbed through her, remembering that she was the first one to hold Elliot's baby, and keep him close to her. It wasn't fair that Kathy had never really gotten that opportunity.

"Liv, you need your rest. I'm gonna bring you back to your room, okay?" Olivia nodded, and they went back to their floor as he brought her to the room where the nurses gave her all the drug concoctions for the day to make sure that she'd heal. Her eyes fluttered closed again as Elliot watched her from the doorway, and he rubbed his eyes, tired, but glad that at least one of the women he loved had survived the terrible accident.


	3. Chapter 3

**Mercy General Hospital**

**Saturday, 3:00 p.m**

A week went by, and Olivia was quickly bouncing back from her concussion. A nurse took her blood pressure and then smiled. "Everything's back to normal in your blood pressure again. Because of your transfusion, we can take your stitches out. The transfusion gave you more platelets than expected, so you're pretty much in the clear in terms of your health. You just have to stay here for another week so we can monitor your concussion." She was bright and chirpy as she walked out of the room.

Olivia whipped her legs over the side of the bed and stood up carefully, still getting used to not using the wheelchair. She still needed the IV, but could carry it around with her. She walked down the hallway, where she knew her partner would be. He was always there at 3, every day. Elliot glanced up at her and then looked back at Kathy as Olivia walked into the room.

Over the last week, everyone from SVU had visited her and given the updates of all the cases they'd been working. Cragen told her that when she was ready and cleared, she could come back. Fin and Munch told her about the guy they caught the day of the accident, and how they thought there was a copycat killer on the loose, before shutting up from a glare from Cragen. They weren't supposed to worry her with anything.

"They took a CT scan today. There's no activity. They declared her brain dead. The kids don't know yet. And Eli gets discharged tomorrow." Elliot cradled his head in his hands. "I just wish I knew what to do."

Olivia walked over to her partner and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Elliot, you'll figure it out." She stopped and the silence overwhelmed the room. "Oh my god. They asked you to pull the plug, didn't they?" Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

Elliot nodded silently, and then looked at his wife's face. "I think she'd want me to do it. She wouldn't want me wasting all of the money and time on her, knowing she'd never come back. Kathy was selfless like that. I think I owe it to her. To see her without the tubes, one last time." Elliot turned his head towards his partner, and his eyes were glassy, filled with tears.

"El…" Olivia held his head in her arms as he stared distantly, still thinking. "El, you have to stop thinking about it so much. It's going to overwhelm you."

"She's my wife, Olivia!" He snapped. "What do you expect me to do? This is a person I've been with since high school, and now she's basically gone. Do you understand that?"

Olivia was startled and taken aback by Elliot's sudden change in character, and her eyes were dilated. The room once again filled with silence, except for the noise of Kathy's machines. He almost never snapped at her like that, and whenever he was frustrated or irritated, he would just make a harsh comment. "I'll talk to you later, El." She left the room and headed off to her room to get the stitches in her arm and head out.

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><p><strong>Olivia's Hospital Room<strong>

**Saturday, 4:14 p.m**

"Alright, Mrs. Benson, this is the last one." One of the interns had been taking each stitch out, one by one. She cut the small black thread from behind her ear and put it in the small metal tray where the other little pieces of black thread had been placed. "There. You're all good." The nurse left with the stitches and medical supplies, and closed the door.

Olivia got out of bed and walked over to the bathroom, lifting the hair by her ear and looking at the scar. It curved over her ear from the level of her eyebrow to just below the tip of her ear. It was a thin, curved scar, shaped like a long, backwards C. She ran her fingers over the slightly bumpy ridge, before putting her hair down again, covering the scar.

Casey knocked on the room's door. "Hey, Liv." Olivia walked out of the bathroom.

"Hey. What's going on? I thought you weren't visiting today. Didn't you have a case?"

"Yeah, new evidence came up, so it's on hold for now. But I'm here about what happened to you."

"What do you mean?"

"The car accident? We don't think it was an accident." She came over and sat on the unmade bed. "That guy who ran into your car; he's off the grid. We found out the car he has was stolen, and we're getting a warrant on the guy who was driving it. He left his fingerprints. His name's Jackson Carrie. We think he was stalking you and tried to kill you."

Olivia tried to absorb everything that was being said to her, but it didn't make sense. Why would they target her then? Why would they target Kathy? Was she just a casualty? She shook her head and backed up against the pillow. "It just doesn't make sense. What would they have against me?" She tried remembering anything from the last name. "Wait, didn't we have a case with a girl with the last name Carrie? She was 15, was a target of a serial rapist we put away last year, but the girl killed herself before she could testify."

"Yeah, it could be him. I'll go back to the office and have them dig up the case. Maybe we can find him and get him to pay for what he did." Casey left without saying another word and Olivia sat up on the bed, trying to think over everything in the case and where she must've gone wrong.


End file.
